The novelty field requires a seemingly-endless supply of presentations and devices which provide surprise or amusement when opened or operated. It is known to provide greeting cards and childrens's books which have a plurality of planar sheets that are moved in-plane relative to one another to provide changed display configurations. Pop-up folded constructions are also known. While many of these are of great amusement to their recipients, in general they rely for their novelty on the printed subject matter, or on the shape of the folded structures. While the variety of these devices is theoretically limited only by the capacity of the human mind to think up new slogans or presentations, still the attainable variety is inherently limited by the format of its presentation.
What is ultimately of greater importance than a new printed or shaped message is a novel and different structural format in which to deliver a message, thereby making available an entirely new range or array of attainable messages and presentations. It is an object of this invention to provide a new structural format.
The format provided by this invention involves volumetric growth from a lesser stored volume to a larger expanded volume. The volume of the format itself increases. This is not a mere unfolding type linear enlargement. As a consequence of its construction, the enlarged displayed construction can take a shape that simulates a known structure such as a flower stalk, for example. Furthermore, the change in volume can be accomplished by means analogous to real-life procedures such as the watering of a pot to produce a flower stalk.
This invention involves the use of a dried, compressed material which expands upon the application of water to form a sponge-like cellular structure. The compressed structure can initially be shaped so that upon expansion it assumes a desired configuration.
Compressed sponges which expand upon addition of water are known. What also is known is that especially when the material is a cellulose, the expanded material while wet has only negligible structural strength. Accordingly, While it is possible to provide - block or a ball as an expanded shape, and expect it to maintain its shape, the same cannot be said of any such structure whose orthogonal dimensions differ much from one another. The structural properties of the wet expanded product are a limiting parameter on what can be accomplished as a "growing" novelty which utilizes such a material.
It is an object of this invention to provide a water-actuated novelty which is initially compressed and which, when water is applied, can lengthen along one of its axes to an appreciable degree while still retaining a configuration respective to an elongated structure such as a flower stalk.
It is a further object of this invention to provide this structure in such a configuration that its visible portion after expansion is considerably more elongated than could be supported by a base-mounted reinforcement.